Canada’s telecommunications sector contributed $87.3 billion in direct GDP and supported 661,000 jobs across industries in 2024, according to a new PricewaterhouseCoopers report (PwC) released Tuesday morning.
The report, Enabling Canada’s Economic Independence and Global Competitiveness Through Telecommunications, was commissioned by the Canadian Telecommunications Association (CTA), which represents carriers, equipment manufacturers and other companies that build, maintain and operate telecom networks in Canada, including Bell, Rogers, Videotron, SaskTel, Eastlink, Tbaytel, Xplore, Ericsson Canada and Nokia Canada.
The $87.3 billion in GDP contributed by Canada’s telecom sector includes $30.1 billion in immediate direct…
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The parties are currently engaged in a carriage dispute
By Ahmad Hathout
Corus is suing Telus in the Ontario Superior Court for allegedly breaking its distribution agreement by withholding and refusing to repay roughly $2.5 million in service fees.
Corus filed the claim this week revealing the parties are currently engaged in a dispute over the terms for carrying Corus’s services, which Telus continues to distribute per a regulatory standstill.
Crucially, the existing agreement, which continues to govern the parties during the dispute, includes a section that stipulates that Telus “shall not deduct or set-off any amounts for any reason from Service Fees…
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Quebecor said it welcomes the decision
By Ahmad Hathout
The Federal Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday that the CRTC did not err when it chose Quebecor’s rate to access Rogers’s wireless facilities as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) during final offer arbitration (FOA).
The court rejected all three arguments the cable giant put forth for why it believed the regulator erred when it chose the lower rate, which it argued was unjust and unreasonable per the Telecommunications Act.
Rogers argued that the CRTC erred by ruling in July 2023 that just and reasonable rates can “include rates that may…
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By Howard Law, author of MediaPolicy.ca and Canada vs. California: How Ottawa took on Netflix and the streaming giants (Lorimer, 2024)
Last week, Quebec’s culture minister Mathieu Lacombe slid a wild card into Prime Minister Mark Carney’s deck by tabling Bill 109 in the National Assembly.
The bill contemplates doing for Quebec exactly what the federal Online Streaming Act, Bill C-11, mandated the CRTC to do two years ago for all of Canada: regulate streaming platforms so that original French-language content reaches more French-speaking Canadians.
The Lacombe bill claims a constitutional jurisdiction it doesn’t have (until the Supreme Court tells us…
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By Ahmad Hathout
The director of media for Canada’s largest private sector union said Tuesday the CRTC could view local news as a service of “exceptional importance,” making it qualify for mandatory distribution, to drive more support for the expensive-to-produce programming.
Such a mandatory distribution could be imposed on online streamers as well, said Unifor’s Randy Kitt, who urged the commission to not let market forces determine the fate of a sector that has seen mass layoffs recently.
“We’ll just lose more jobs, we’ll lose more journalists, we’ll have more news deserts, and our democracy will slip away,” Kitt said about the…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Pushing back against the assertion that the public broadcaster should take up the mantle of at-risk programs where private broadcasters have struggled, CBC’s executive vice president said this must be a whole-of-system effort.
“We feel that we should not be seen as a gap filler for the problems of the other broadcasters – that where market forces don’t come easily to their decisions about programming – it shouldn’t just be assumed not to worry about it, the CBC will do it,” Barbara Williams told the five-member CRTC panel on the second-last day of its hearing into the definition…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Rogers executives said Friday they feared the CRTC would come out of its hearings on the modernization of the Broadcasting Act emboldened to try to regulate some of the issues it has identified during its current proceeding instead of loosening the regulatory grip it has had on traditional broadcasters.
“We can’t rely on the traditional tools anymore,” said Dean Shaikh, the company’s senior vice president of regulatory affairs. “We no longer have a closed system. We’re competing against massive online streaming giants that have no rules. We need much more flexibility to compete for audiences, subscribers, advertising dollars…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Bell executives told the CRTC on Thursday that the broadcaster doesn’t need outside funding support for news production – just an easing of requirements on a losing product like community news.
“We’re losing $40 million a year in the conventional newscast,” said Jonathan Daniels, Bell’s vice president of regulatory law. “And so we looked at what would just be a better way that we could help finance that. And so we suggested that it was a redirecting of money from the community TV … because it’s just not been a very successful product.”
The executives said the company spends…
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Quebecor Media subsidiary TVA Group announced Wednesday several layoffs, primarily in its television division, as the broadcaster faces an uncertain future due to ongoing financial challenges, the Montreal-based company said.
“TVA Group, like other private broadcasters, is operating in a steadily deteriorating business environment and continues to absorb substantial financial losses while competing on an uneven playing field,” Quebecor President and CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau, who is the acting president and CEO of TVA Group, said in a press release.
“In this alarming situation, TVA Group is forced to cut some 30 jobs,…
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By Ahmad Hathout
Quebecor executives said Wednesday that Radio-Canada, the French-language version of the CBC, should be made to step-up on producing children’s programming because it has become economically difficult to do so for private broadcasters.
The company’s vice president of public and regulatory affairs told the five-member CRTC panel in response to a question about how to sustain the delivery of children’s programming that the public broadcaster — which is already required by the CRTC to broadcast a certain number of hours of kids programming — should pick up where private broadcasters have failed.
“We hope the mandate of Radio-Canada will…
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